Say the article about CSR and the zoo engine running “biofuel”.
What is the latest on CSR’s bid to convert “3463 to biofuel” and run 135 MPH?
Last I heard, things were tied up in court over the little matter of ownership. That was over a year ago.
That was the last I heard as well. It would be nice if someone could update this with the most recent action in court.
As far as we know, no new news or movement of the 3463 out of it location.
Like most of the possible rebuilds into a super loco, this one seems to lacking any progress. Even if all of the steam maintenance issues were solved, it would still require about 10 times the maintenance that any diesel or electric requires.
The railroads that owned and built their own steam locomotives purchased diesels in the end just to eliminate hundreds of backshop and round house jobs.
How wonderful it is to see a steam locomotive running on excursions, but in every day use they are very high in maintenance.
Larry
All,
Not sure if this is a restoration issue, a paternity suit, or an old fashioned case of sour grapes.
I witnessed the shutdown of Topeka Blvd back in '56 to push 3463 across to the fairgrounds. I watched her rot and be plifered over the years. Topekans are now (and have been since this contraversy started) starting to care about this piece of history, after letting it sit and rot and finally being bannished to a remote fairground location?
That’s one side of this story.
A steam engine has limitations. Mechanical valves, linkages, driving arms and rotating devices can only move so fast. I think the fastest for a steam loco was about 100 MPH back in the old days. Maybe some 100 " drivers could do the job but I bet starting up might have some problems.
Who owns charitable gifts? If CSR plays their cards right, this could end up in the US Supreme Court arguing this issue.
I have a suggestion for all involved. If the lumber yard spur is still in existance, put the engine on it and take it to the Great Overland Station where the claimed owners live, scrape off the rust and use plenty of black paint. Build a house for it or let it sit for another 50 years and rust away. UP 844, 4014 and 3985 can all bow their stacks in a moment of rememberance as they steam through.
I guess that is the conventional wisdom, that steam is high maintenance.
There are two kinds of maintenance. One kind is along the lines of scheduled repairs – truing drivers, reboring cylinders, remachining bearings, straighening frames, descaling boilers, tightening superheater headers, fixing leaks. The other kind is related to day-to-day operations – taking on coal and especially water and emptying the ash pan along with filling oil cups (later, applying Alemite grease). I suppose there is a third kind of maintenance intermediate between the two – unclogging flues, smokebox cleaning, unblocking spark arresting screens.
Sources range from the Notorious H. F. Brown to David Wardale have supplied data that with respect to the first kind or “shop” maintenance, steam locomotives hold their own against Diesels, especially when considering new vs old locomotives and how maintenance of all types of locomotive increases with age of the equipment.
With respect to the second kind of maintenance, I get the impression from Wardale’s book that it is more of an operational inconvenience than a significant portion of cost.
Consider the need for water. At the heydey of steam a lot of resources went into providing wate
This thing about “zoo engines.”
Amusement park gauge locomotives seem affordable for people who want to study steam locomotive concepts in a way that mainline standard gauge is not.
Think of it. The most operational experience for the Gas Producer Combustion System, something the CSR people are touting, was obtained with L. D. Porta’s modifications to steam locomotives on a coal-hauling line in Patagonia, the far southern portion of Argentina in the direction of and approaching the climate of Antartica.
That line, which hauled a commercially significant amount of coal, was 2-foot gauge. Someone can tell me if there are scaling laws where something done in 2-foot narrow gauge or in “zoo” gauge doesn’t work the same way in mainline standard gauge. But a zoo gauge T1 would cost much less than the full size one planned.
All,
Just so no misunderstanding, my original post referred to Zoo only because the Milwakee Zoo was involved. No put down of the smaller machines.
Are there scalings between large and small, sure. Are they accurate, who knows or better yet, who cares.
CSR tested it’s fuel on a ZOO engine. They could have tested it anywhere that a controlled fire could be lit. Fuel burns, burning fuel produces heat, heat can be used to do work, in this case boil water creating steam. CSR’s “scientific experiment” was flawed by the fact that the particular Zoo engine used had its own unknown “scientific effeciencies and ineffeciencies”.
Where in transportation development was the steam turbine/electric locomotive? Heaven forbid, where was the nuclear steam turbine/electric?
Reminds me of an afternoon of train watching in San Luis Obisbo, Ca.
The north and south Coast Daylights were fighting for platform space as both were late and both arrived at the same time. On track #3, a northbound freight had tied down to wait for the priority traffic to clear the main line. Tied down may not be the correct term. Both power units had been shut off.
Passengers are cleared, time to get back to work. Young engineer tries to start lead unit, an EMD unit. Battery wasn’t that strong and that old beast coughed, sputtered but would not start. The persistant engineer continued until he ran the last crank out of the battery. He radios for help, gets told to kick himself in the rear, start the #2 unit , connect the power busses and start the lead.
Unit #2 was a GE turbine electric. With a quick flash of fire out the exhaust there was the scream of engine and all was well.
The lead engine, probably embarressed at this point, had no problem firing up with a hot start voltage.
What’s the point? Maybe that young engineer in Ca learned some common sense.&nbs
That is one side of the story, but I believe it is not accurate.
The party responsible for letting the locomotive rot is Great Overland Station (GOS). There was a volunteer group that did a lot of restoration work with the plan of moving the locomotive to the Union Pacific station in Topeka. As I understand it, that group was doing the work on behalf of the presumed owner of the locomotive called Topeka Railroad Days. TRD was reorganized as GOS, and GOS focused their efforts on working on the U.P. station. GOS abandoned the plan to move the locomotive to the U.P. station. At the same time, they forbade the volunteer group from doing any more work on the locomotive. That is when the engine began to deteriorate. It was GOS that was responsible for the deterioration.
As a culmination of GOS’s disinterest in #3463, they sold it to CRS in Minnesota. The group trying to hold on the engine today is simply a reorganization of the effort to preserve the locomotive that has always existed despite the resistance of Great Overland Station. Upon learning of the sale of the engine, they began to question who actually owned it and whether GOS had the right to sell i
I realize this is straying from the topic but just so I can better understand what is going on…
Who had title to the Topeka “Union Station” back when the last UP passenger train stopped? If I remember, it was during the time that Rock Island was taken over by Cotton Belt and Amtrak was taking over passenger service. Who had title to it when the vagrants managed to set fire to it? and what year was that? Who had title and was able to raise the funds to restore it? and what year was that?
johnbill
Goodness gracious. They are not planning to hide an oil tank in the wood pile Knots Berry Farm style let alone turn the tender into a Diesel B-unit to propel a fake steamer. They want to make that locomotive steam.
I am trying to tell you that CSR are a version of “steam nuts” and all of this “green bio-fuel” is just a cover to justify tinkering with a steam engine.
All of this obsession and obsessing over preservation and historical authenticity. If on an alternative timeline steam hadn’t been scrapped that soon, the locomotive in question may well have been subject to the same modifications.
People want to preserve a snapshot-in-time version of steam power without considering a what-steam-could-have been version?
Preservation smerservation, I just want to see that locomotive under steam!
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I am not sure what they want. I have heard, as you say, that they are just railfans using the “green bio-fuel” as a cover to play with trains. If that is the case, I think they have less credibility than what is implied in the grandiose plan they have put on the table. I would rather see the locomotive preserved as an intact historical artifact than turned into a highly modified “test bed” for a science experiment.
If they are really about what they claim to be about, designing and building a new locomotive would be far less costly than what they say they will do with the 3463.
Here’s the thing: That locomotive flat out can barely get itself past 100mph, let alone anywhere near the intended “Project 130” target speed. Even if there were no difficulties imposed by using torrefied firing/co-firing, there are substantial and extensive changes required in steam circuit, suspension, guiding and balancing that would likely make the locomotive very different from its ‘historical’ configuration and appearance. This class was a bigger flop than a T1 as effective high-speed passenger power, and I confess I would be interested to see what the design could do with the obvious design and construction boners remediated. However, while I have not seen Shaun’s full ‘laundry list’ of necessary alterations, it would be disingenuous to call them merely ‘tinkering with a steam engine’.</
Alathough I believe the N&W J, the Niagra, the Ripley Northerns and some other 4-8-4s were a better solution for the PRR’s use than the T-1, I do not regard the T-1 as a flop. If dieselization had not come so fast, minor impromements would have been made, such as the more advanced Franklin system, and the locomotive would have met goals in an outstanding manner, possibly have been the very best high speed passenger steam locomotive ever built. That is, of course, one of the goals of the group that wishes to revive the design.
I never suffered a delay when riding behind one on the four or five times I did just that, Red Aarrow, Trailblazer, General.
I am not quite sure what you mean in your reference to “a long track record of critical incompetence.”
There is a long track record of dedicated and competent maintenance and upkeep. The phase of deterioration began when Great Overland Station banned the competent maintenance and upkeep. I am not quite sure what GOS is all about, but it strikes me that they had little interest in doing anything with #3463. I perceive that their interests lie in more sophisticated and lofty goals involving far ranging objectives about community and culture, all revolving around the architectural theme of the restored U.P. station. So, in my opinion, they gave the locomotive away to be rid of it.
So this always repeated gripe that the people who want to retain the locomotive are unworthy because they let the engine rot when they had custody to it is not true.
I think it is fair to say that the news of the sale of the locomotive to CSR triggered a reaction to question the right sell the engine as well as to mount an effort to keep it in Topeka. The objective of
AT&SF 3463 was one of 6 super Hudson 4-6-4 steam locomotives built for fast passenger name trains before WWII. Similar to the work performed by the famous J3 Hudsons of New York Central. AT&SF 3460 was streamlined like the Dreyfus styled Hudsons of the Central, however, unlike the Central only ATSF 3460 recieved the treatment. Affectionately called the “blue goose” it was painted robbins egg blue in color!
The J1 New York Central 4-6-4 Hudsons did achieve near 100 mph in regular service and were considerably smaller than the ATSF 3460’s. The J3 New York Central 4-6-4 Hudsons equipped with combustion chamber firebox and smaller diameter cylinders and full roller bearing drive did achieve well over 100 mph.
ATSF 3463 is actually a closer relative to two other western American railroad Hudson design steam locomotives. Milwaukee Railroad massive F7 streamline 4-6-4 hudsons that pulled the Hiawatha name trains. Automotive grade crossings north of Chicago were all placarded with signs warning motorists “trains cross this road at over 100 mph.” Unfortunately none of the Milwaukee F7 engines were saved. Also close in design to the ATSF 3463 was the Chicago And North Western Railroad class E-4 Hudson steam locomotives of which none were saved either.
The ATSF 3460’s were massive “Hudson” engines over 16 feet tall with extremely large drivers and higher boiler pressure built late in the steam production era and I would be surprised if they did not exceed the speed of the New York Central engines owing to this size increase. Santa Fe was a railroad well equipped to run its name trains at the maximum possible train speeds on a regular basis and set the worlds record long distance run with ATSF 3461 pulling “#8 Fast Mail” a total of 2,227 miles running thru from Los Angeles, California to Chicago, Illinois running at its regular speed of 90 m
Perhaps the intern should put his money where his mouth is and join the “Coalition for Sustainable Rail” to work on the rebuilding and upgrading of ATSF 3463, assuming that they actually own it.
I’ve read that ATSF 3460 was also referred to as “Mae West” in deference to its curvaceous styling.
84-inch-drivered Hudsons (or Baltic)…
Milwaukee Road F-7…
Chicago & Northwestern E-4…
Santa Fe 3460 Class Blue Goose…
Fellow bloggers haven’t been much help. so have done my own digging.
The UP station opened for business in 1927.
AT&SF sold 3463 to city of Topeka in 1956.
The last scheduled passanger train was on May 2. 1971.
UP continued to use station for office space (in addition to or in place of offices at 4th and Kansas…or was that 5th?)
1988 UP closes down operations at station and leaves it abandon.
1992 Fire destroys west end of building
1992 Railroad Heritage Inc leases building from UP
1998 UP donates building to Topeka Railroad Days ( thought to be a subsidarary of Railroad Heritage Inc)
2000-2002 restoration of building and grounds undertaken.
2004 Great Overland Station officially opens
Given this timeline, I will state once again, from 1957 through 1973 3463 rotted on the fairgrounds.
I must include the 1973 cutoff date as that is when I left Topeka in search of employment. I have been back many times and not seen anything different other than the move to back behind the trees next to where the racetrack used to be.
The city of Topeka was given a diamond but didn’t know the worth of a diamond. When I say city I mean the citizens, the government, everyone.
I guess I mean myself as well. I never even took my son down to see her. He was only 3 but might have remembered, but I sure never appreciated.
So bottom line is nobody knows where the court case is or if there has been a resolution in the ownership dispute.
I will bow out of this blog and joust windmills in my neck of the woods.
&n
Johnbill,
That is a very interesting history you recite of the Topeka fairgrounds and Union Pacific station and Overland Station.
Legally, however, the original statement you made is the only seemingly significant one, “That the city of Topeka bought the ATSF 3463!” or was given the engine.
Whatever did or did not transpire at the fairgrounds does not effect the city ownership of the locomotive unless they sell or give the locomotive away legally, by offical letter or bill of sale. I assume the city decided to keep the engine at this or another location but ownership was with Topeka city government. I assume it would take an act of the City Council or other government official designated with legal control of city property such as the city attorney acting under official instructions to be rid of it. There seems to be no legal record at all of the City of Topeka doing any of this. Likely this is the reason for the legal squabble - if they had a clear letter of ownership CSR would have exercised it - and they haven’t.
Another thing, for motor vehicles like cars or boats the state demands and issues a “certificate of title.” I never heard of a railroad locomotives - which run on private trackage and private “right of way” of ever having a document from a Secretary of State such as for use on public highways. Instead railroad locomotives are delivered from their manufacturer over private railways and not public highways.
The railroad that purchased the locomotive was given instead a bill of sale or letter of ownership, Sometimes a Bank or financial house would finance or the transfer of funds providing the trust or bank the document of ownership - this was often the case with diesel locomotives which showed banking and trust ownership on their builders plates as the legal owners.&nbs